Speaking at BSides Ottawa – a great security conference tradition

What do you do if you’re interested in learning about security and hanging out with a variety of interesting people to network and share ideas, but the most popular conferences are too far away, over-crowded, and too expensive? You look for, or start your own local BSides conference. BSides conferences are free, security-oriented events (funded by sponsors, and staffed by volunteers) that started in 2009.

Last year’s event (2014) in Ottawa was a great mix of interesting talks.

This year, I’m fortunate to have been invited to speak at the BSides Ottawa event on October 2 and 3 (Friday and Saturday at the Ottawa RA Centre). I will be presenting on the history (and possibly the future) of the Honey Stick Project. If you’re not familiar with it, The Honey Stick Project is a fun series of social experiments I started in 2008 to explore the human component of risks.

In this BSides talk, I’ll take you inside the projects I have done, with the help of Symantec, to see what happens when you lose a Smartphone that has no password or security. There are some new ideas I’m exploring now to expand the scope of the project with some fun new tools.

The conference agenda includes some great speakers, and they have a Capture the Flag (CTF) event, which is always fun, too.

I hope you can make it if you’re in town. Feel free to seek me out and introduce yourself if you’re there. You can learn more about the BSides Ottawa free event by clicking HERE.